Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement
We believe that the legal profession is strongest when its membership reflects the populations it serves. However, systemically oppressed attorneys, judges, and law students – that is, attorneys, judges, and law students from under-represented, historically excluded, and systemically oppressed populations – encounter countless barriers to entry, confront structural challenges to success, and must navigate daily micro- and macro-aggressions regarding their identities in the legal profession that are not faced by those outside these groups. Each of these barriers, challenges, and slights takes a toll on their individual and collective well-being, resulting in a hostile landscape for these practitioners in Massachusetts. The long-standing systems that have created this current hostility have done so by design, and we believe it is essential that the Massachusetts bar engage in conscious, intentional effort to dismantle them.
The 2019 Report issued by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Steering Committee on Lawyer Well-Being highlighted the challenges faced by these professionals throughout Massachusetts, including by public lawyers, private firm lawyers, in-house counsel, and law students. Ultimately, the Report concluded that “[a] strong and on-going commitment to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of our practices and in all parts of the judicial branch, is crucial to our individual and collective well-being,” and made various recommendations meant to mitigate and ultimately dismantle the systems and cultures of oppression and exclusion that have pervaded law practice in the Commonwealth for centuries.
The SJC Standing Committee on Lawyer Well-Being accordingly prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion. We identify three goals for our DEI work:
To Focus. The Committee’s commitment to DEI will comprehensively inform the Committee’s work, paying special attention to the additional stressors, burdens, and barriers to entry faced by systemically oppressed legal professionals, and working to address these challenges in the programs, proposals, recommendations, best practices, guides, rules, regulations and other projects developed under the Committee’s purview.
To Communicate. The Committee will collaborate with the affinity bar associations and other groups throughout the Commonwealth focused on DEI among Massachusetts lawyers, so that both (a) the Committee can efficiently seek input from these attorneys, judges and law students, and (b) these individuals and communities have a clear channel of communication to the Committee with respect to issues they are facing that affect their well-being and success.
To Create Change. The Committee will create, develop, and assist with the implementation of short-term, medium-term, and long term projects aimed at addressing both the individual and systemic elements of current legal practice that make participation, let alone success, in the legal profession harder to achieve and sustain for these legal professionals than it is for those outside these groups.
With these goals in mind, we will work hard, likely make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and continue working to effect real, meaningful change in the profession to not only ensure that systemically oppressed legal professionals in Massachusetts receive equal treatment, but that they receive the support they need to achieve equitable access to and success in the profession, and that the barriers, challenges and slights they face every day are reduced, mitigated and, ultimately, eliminated.